We looked for the 'Nicest Place in America.' Our contest hit a nerve..Pay even a little bit of attention to the news these days and you’ll likely come to a depressing conclusion: America is the most divided place on earth.
With every new firestorm — football players kneeling during the national anthem, students protesting conservative speakers on college campuses, neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville — our society seems to take one more step toward a breakdown. ...

Navy vet on Vegas shooting: We need gun laws that make us as safe as our military.Every time a mass shooting happens we can depend on a few things. First, everyone will offer thoughts and prayers. Oddly those never seem to result in any action. Then, the left will come out and call for better laws and the political right will say that the country needs time to mourn.
We’ve had time many times over to mourn as a country, and a nationwide discussion about our gun violence epid...

NFL protests: Donald Trump fumbles First Amendment footballSomeone, please find Donald Trump a copy of the Constitution — preferably a simplified version with pictures and charts. Once he absorbs what it says, perhaps he will stop trying to tear it apart.
Trump is angry at athletes for exercising their right to speech; but his anger did not begin there. Last February, at a campaign rally in Texas, Donald Trump spoke of "open(ing) up libel laws." He ne...

n Hurricane Irma's wake, 3 takeaways on the costsGive anti-government rhetoric a rest
The early response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma has been encouraging. People around the country have offered their support. And, so far at least, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has not looked as inept as it did after Katrina in 2005.
This is a good thing, because people suffering in Texas and Florida could use all the help they can get. And mayb...

America needs tax reform to spur competition and growth says Jamie Dimon.The United States is blessed with a combination of advantages that few other countries enjoy. We are the world’s longest surviving democracy, with an entrepreneurial culture that fosters and rewards hard work and innovation. Our natural resources are abundant. We have the world’s strongest military and a generally reliable rule of law and low corruption. Our country has some of the best universiti...

Evangelicals squander their moral authority by sticking with TrumpIn the wake of President Trump’s waffling on white supremacy, his supporters and advisers have abandoned him in droves.
After a wave of prominent CEOs defected from the president’s Manufacturing Council and Strategy & Policy Forum, Trump decided to disband both. On Friday morning, the entire President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities resigned. As their joint letter to Trump declared, “Ign...

Trump and white supremacist haters: He's delivering much more than words.“Voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage.”
These were the words spoken by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke when he threw his support behind Donald Trump in February 2016 and urged other white Americans to do the same.
Duke’s show of support was a turning point in the Trump campaign, sparking a slew of endorsements from leaders of the white supremacis...

Shakespeare meets Keystone Kops at the Trump White House: Mastio & Lawrence.Jill: We can’t say we didn’t see it coming. Someone got forced out of the Trump administration, and it wasn't the communications director who unleashed an epic string of vulgar insults against the White House chief of staff that ended up in The New Yorker because the communications director didn't go off the record.
No, the banished one was the hapless chief of staff, Reince Priebus. All that's...

4 good reasons Trump shouldn't scrap the Iran nuclear deal or goad Iran to pull outPresident Trump has certified for the second time that Iran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear accord that limits its nuclear program. But the leaks and background briefings surrounding his statement, followed by new sanctions announced Tuesday, sent unmistakable signals: The decision was taken grudgingly, Trump is increasingly unhappy with Iran and the deal, and he may be looking for a way ou...

Don Jr. Russia emails trap Trump and his whole circus. They have no good choices.By releasing a damning email exchange from last year revealing his own eagerness to take help from the Russian government to elect his father, Donald Trump Jr. has brought us to a watershed moment. One of the dikes blocking public understanding of the story line of potential collusion has given way. A flood of further incriminating evidence is now almost certain to follow.
President Trump is in...